One thing I still love about Walnut Grove is the water wheel on the mill. I realize that may sound pretty random but I know that Mike had to fight for it. One of the producers or perhaps the studio had said no to his original request to the mill’s waterwheel — not sure who — on the grounds it would be a large, needless expense, saying that you could easily build Walnut Grove without spending god-knows-how-much on such a thing. Instead of giving up, which was not in his nature, Mike cooked up a scheme. Without telling anyone, he used his own money to purchase the mill equipment, created a fake rental company, and rented the water wheel, the mill works, and all things necessary to create the stream that appears to power it (all fake as Simi Valley is bone dry). I believe that by hiding the cost as a rental instead of a purchase, he got it past the bean counters. Once it was part of the series, it was too late to go back. I always admired Mike for fighting — if not outright pranking the studio — for that waterwheel because he was right. It’s a detail that helps brings the town to life.
As beautiful as the movie ranch was, there were challenges shooting out there. Depending on the time of year the place is naturally brown and dry so any greenery — such as the grass and plants around the pond or along the streams — had to be brought in. For that matter all the ponds and streams had to be created too.
In the show’s opening title sequence when you see little Carrie bobbling down the hillside through the grass and flowers and she takes her famous header, all those flowers are fake and their stems are wires. Apparently as they were filming her running down the hill, Sidney Greenbush’s right shoe got caught on one of the wires and perhaps the most famous tumble in TV history was born.
We all learned pretty quickly you had to take some precautions on a shoot day in Simi Valley, where it got very hot. For example, in “Country Girls” you can see that Missy has a sunburn — no, that’s not bad ‘70s TV make-up. In the previous episode she’d be allowed to hang around in the sun too long and she turned lobster red. After that the producers made sure all the actors had plenty of shade in between takes.
Later in the series we shot an episode called “In the Big Inning,” and at about midday we were all in baseball stands watching a game. Of course there I was in 100-degree heat in my long skirt, petticoats, and all the other layers. When the director called for a break everyone got up but me. I sat there unmoving. Someone realized I had heatstroke and — being our second summer at the movie ranch — the crew was prepared. They put wet washcloths on the back of my neck, soaked in a blend of water and witch hazel, which brought me back around.
Much has been made of the fact (mostly by Alison) that Mike Landon didn’t wear underwear while he worked. Well guess what? Neither did I — at least not in Simi Valley, where temperatures were regularly out of control. Unlike Mike, who wore his woolen pants like a glove, and often left little doubt regarding his gender, my commando status was as discrete as could be. Though once I nearly gave the cast and crew quite a show when my skirt was invaded by a wasp. It happened in front of the schoolhouse while a lot of people were milling around between takes. My first terrified impulse was to throw the skirts up over my head and get the thing out. Fortunately Richalene Kelsay, the wardrobe person, grabbed my arm and dragged me around the back of the church, where we could flush the beast out and I could avoid advertising my wares.
One of my other wardrobe contributions, which you can kind of see in that episode of “Country Girls,” among others, is that I wore a bra that I really liked, as it was comfortable and fit well — something that’s important for long shooting days. Plus as someone who was a hippie at heart I often went without a bra in my daily life. The downside to this thing of comfort was that the thinness of the material tended to show my nipples. And depending on the blouse I was in, well, there they were. Should that be a big deal? We all have them. It’s not like Miss Beadle was some kind of outlier born without all the usual parts.
I figured given the nature of the show Mike or one of the producers would eventually ask me to re-think this choice. But no one said a word, though fairly often, under the right lighting conditions when they were shooting me “from the jugs up,” I would see Mike and the cinematographer take turns peering at me through the camera’s eyepiece discussing something just above a whisper. The only thing I’d hear is Mike murmuring to the cameraman, “It’s fine, let’s shoot it.”
For anyone who was a kid watching Little House on the Prairie, it was probably easy to imagine that the lives of the actors who played Mary, Laura, Nellie, or any of the others were really fun and exciting. The truth is it was mixed. I should mention right off that Mike Landon was in many ways a kid at heart and was a great mentor to some of the child actors, being especially close with Melissa Gilbert. He would break the tension of a long day with a joke or a prank and make the kids laugh.
For the most part though life on the Little House set was hardly a play land. The show was run as a tight ship in all ways including expectations for the children. They were either shooting scenes, in their on-set school, or on a union mandated break. There was very little goof-around time except scripted moments in front of the camera. It was always fun to see the genuine joy in the eyes of someone like Jonathan Gilbert, Melissa’s real-life brother, in his role as Willie Oleson when he got to terrorize the girls at school with a big frog.
I didn’t get the idea that any of them were particularly unhappy. They all seemed up for the daily challenge. But I often wondered how they were doing since their lives stood in such contrast to my own childhood back in Yuba City, a time when life was so easy and free.
On top of that I’m not sure that being on the show necessarily translated into any added status in their personal lives. When you live in Hollywood, you’re surrounded by lots of people who work in entertainment — your mom and dad, your parents’ friends, aunts and uncles — and it takes the shine off. It’d be like growing up in Napa Valley where half the people you know work in the wine industry, in Detroit around automobile manufacturing, or Washington DC in the fishbowl of government. Hollywood is a factory town. And Alison talks about how if anything, beyond the typical trials of teenage life, being on television actually added to the social challenges she dealt with rather than giving her a sparkly carpet ride of coolness. She’d be in school on set for two weeks straight and then back in regular school for a couple of days when not shooting. Or she’d be in real school for three weeks and then back at her Little House school for four days. The lack of continuity in either direction played havoc with her friendships and social well-being.
Growing up on the set came with other unusual challenges as well. At one point both Alison and Melissa Gilbert had braces, which of course didn’t exist in the 1870s. The make-up people solved that by applying white candle wax to their braces, requiring the poor girls to spend the end of their day getting that gunk out of their teeth in addition to shedding the pounds of pancake make-up we all wore. If you keep an eye out, you can sometimes see the braces. There’s a scene in “Bully Boys” in which Melissa Gilbert sits up in bed at night with an idea she wants to tell Mary about. The light hits her teeth just right and you can see the glint of metal.
Even with these and other things to deal with, the young actors all rose to the challenge. They knew their lines and worked hard to respond to a director’s instructions; no one messed around. When I was playing Miss Beadle, whether in the classroom or outside while the kids were “playing,” I was always the adult, feeling that if I gave into my own impulses to goof around with them, it would ultimately work against the chemistry we had on camera.
I only remember one child actor in my four years on the show, who was cast in a guest role, who showed up not knowing his lines and thinking that this was a place to have some fun. He was replaced after one day.
It’s fun today to watch those episodes with scenes in which the townspeople gather in the church and recognize so many faces. Ruthie Foster, who was my stand-in when they would set up lights, is often
in one of the pews and was so good on camera that Mike eventually gave her a role as Mrs. Foster, one of the townspeople you might see at the Mercantile buying eggs from Mrs. Oleson. A lot of the kids you see were the children of the crew including those of the directors who would come in to direct an episode or two. Once when directing episodes that aired in December 1975 (“The Voice of Tinker Jones” and “Money Crop”), Leo Penn brought along his oldest son Sean Penn, who has an uncredited role, as one of the kids in the schoolhouse.
It was a real gift to get to work with all of them and I love to see them at the reunions and fan events that we get to do. Alison and I clicked early on. Unlike her character she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body but ate up her juicy role as the meanest girl on earth. She could bunch her face up like a fist and scare the bejesus out of all the other kids.
Both Alison and Half-Pint have written books about growing up on Little House and about their private experiences growing up in their real-life families. They each lived through heartbreak and terrible challenges. Alison experienced sexual abuse on a level that is hard to imagine — and yet she has emerged with her humanity and chutzpah intact and works as a fighter for causes benefiting children and AIDS-related charities.
One of the funny things I noticed about Alison when we first started is that when we’d do scenes together she would never look at me directly in the eyes. Partway through a scene I’d realize that she was looking at my nose or a little off to one side. She was a funny kid. She could be very outgoing and sort of enter a room with a real sense of tah-dah and yet she also had some shyness to her, something that was held back a bit.
Melissa Sue Anderson, as discussed in both Alison and Melissa’s books, was never a girl who seemed to fit in with the rest of the kids, nor particularly seemed to want to. She was always ready to work, nailed her part, and was prepared, so I didn’t have any difficulty working with her and in fact I liked her a lot. She seemed like a very normal, healthy, non-Hollywood kid. She wasn’t there to hog the spotlight or to razzle-dazzle anyone. Some of this may’ve been due to her family. Unlike the other kids, many of whom had a paid caretaker with them on the set, Melissa’s mom was there almost all the time. She was my favorite of the actor-kids’ moms on Little House — some of whom were either big, over-the-top personalities or were just basket cases. In fact she and I and Melissa Sue went out to dinner a few times and had nice evenings together.
I wasn’t there to become anyone’s surrogate mother but I did see Missy’s aloofness (or perceived aloofness) between takes and, over time, her isolation from some of the other kids. In many ways she carried herself like a young adult from early on. To this day I have no idea of the causes of any of these dynamics and can only speculate. Melissa Sue Anderson has also written a book about her Little House experiences but, like her presence on set, it doesn’t allow the reader to look too deeply into her life.
Because most of my scenes were filmed with the children in and around the schoolhouse, it took me some time to get to know the adult members of the cast.
When I started working with Karen Grassle, I felt like a complete bumpkin around her. She had earned not one but two degrees at U.C. Berkeley (my sister Barbara’s alma mater) in English and Dramatic Arts — which made my internal inadequacy alarm bells ring. She had also done a broad range of theater from Shakespeare both in the U.S. and in England to a stint on Broadway. The only thing we had in common really was that she’d taken part in the summer program in 1961 at Pasadena Playhouse.
Where my little heart had always been with film and television, Karen was a theater person — so much so that she has talked publicly about the fact that she was almost totally unfamiliar with U.S. television. In early 1974 she’d just come back from doing Shakespeare in England and her agent called, saying that Michael Landon from Bonanza was putting together a show based on Little House on the Prairie and Karen had to ask who Michael was — being unclear which character he had played on the show.
She took her work seriously, was always prepared, and managed to look lovely and even elegant in the plain palate of costumes and make-up the producers gave her character. You can actually see much of her personality on screen as there wasn’t a huge distance between Karen and her character in terms of stamina, smarts, and focus. In other ways she’s very different — more outspoken, a better advocate for herself, and more adventuresome.
She was terrific as Caroline Ingalls and she and Michael always had excellent chemistry on screen. Unfortunately in real life, Karen and Mike didn’t always get along. He would tease her without mercy for being serious-minded and I think she got tired of not only his joking around but of the easy-breezy approach he took to acting in general. Mike was an actor who did not seem to sweat at all in terms of his craft. Time and time again I saw him joshing and joking around with the crew, drinking vodka out of a coffee mug in the middle of the morning, and moments later he’d be in front of the camera as Pa with tears streaming down his cheeks in a scene about a dying colt or some disappointment suffered at Christmastime.
I had heard that when Mike and the producers were casting key roles for the show, the role of Caroline Ingalls very nearly went to Hersha Parady, who would have made the part her own, perhaps a bit earthier, finding little comedic touches, a bit like Mike really. Hersha landed a part later in the show’s run as Alice Garvey, married to Merlin Olsen’s character, Jonathan Garvey.
I have to say that one of the things that worked well with Mike and Karen were in fact their differences. There’s nothing more boring than watching two characters who are too much alike. Sparks often happen in that space between two actors where there’s friction.
One of the other differences between the two was that Karen — and she’s talked about this publicly as well — thought the show was a bit too lightweight in its exploration of themes such as family, marriage relationships, the harshness of prairie life, and so on. She wanted the show to be grittier, as she said once in an interview, adding that at one point she felt like the show was “Let’s Pretend on the Prairie.” She says she’s come to see it differently with time but it’s a legitimate point and gets to a tension that exists any time you produce a show intended for a very broad audience.
“Country Girls” is a good example. On one hand it took a look at what it’s like to be illiterate with Laura’s embarrassment about her inability to read. It also revolves around issues of social class, a theme the show would return to again and again both dramatically and with a sense of humor thanks to Nellie and Harriet Oleson lording their supposed aristocracy over the Ingalls family and other townspeople.
At the same time a fairly rich vein of fantasy runs through the episode with its portrait of idealized family life. Laura is shown as adoring Miss Beadle and of course her mom. At one point she’s at the dinner table and she says to Pa, “Miss Beadle is the most beautiful woman in the world.”
Then Mike shoots his eyes in the direction of Karen and Half Pint takes the hint and adds, “Next to Ma, of course.”
In the meantime Caroline Ingalls is looking over that costly length of blue fabric she purchased at the mercantile to make herself a nice dress — and let’s be honest, doesn’t Ma deserve to have at least one nice thing? Ultimately though, in a generous change-of-heart — because she’s the perfect parent — she uses the fabric to make dresses for her two girls instead.
The real fantasy bit though comes later in the episode when Laura enters an essay writing contest at the school to prove she’s up to the task of reading and writing. In a big moment in front of the whole town Laura reads her essay in which she lavishes rich praise on her mother for her self-sacrifice, hard work, constant attention, and loving kindness.
It is a moment that brings tears to the eyes of Ma and Pa Ingalls. And no doubt to many parents watching because who wouldn’t — at least secretly — love to have that moment when your child entirely on their own, unforced, and un-coached steps forward to declare in amazing and eloquent detail how f
antastic you are in front of everyone you know.
In the real world, it’s pretty unlikely that a nine-year-old would take that kind of notice of what mom or dad does for them, much less trumpet for all the world to hear, unless heavily prompted. And probably bribed with cookies and chocolate milk. Not because they’re bad kids but because in reality children take their parents for granted because they’re mom and dad — and they just naturally do mom and dad things. Just like the sun rises and grass grows and water is wet.
So there’s the show — reality and fantasy spun together in a way that millions of people have found very appealing.
Ultimately Karen — and everyone else — knew that it was Mike’s show and he would produce it the way he wanted to. I think everyone in the cast agrees today that he worked some magic in terms of touching a lot of hearts. Something we did not always see at the time and really wouldn’t know until years, and in some cases, decades later.
When you’re in the middle of a show like that — which is happening within the swirl of your actual life — you don’t always think about the larger life of the show. What it’s saying. How it’s affecting others. You’re doing your job, playing your part, trying to sit in the right chair, get into the moment while hundreds of lights are dangling over your head and the all-seeing eye of the camera is staring you down.
While I initially found Karen intimidating, she turned out to be wonderful to work with and always ready with an act of generosity. Because of her starring role on the show, NBC sent a car to her house to pick her up in the morning on days when we were shooting in Simi Valley. Since she was the only one in the vehicle, she was kind enough to offer me an open invitation to jump in alongside her. I’d get to her house at 5 a.m., and we’d ride out to the set together. It was a great way to arrive at work much more relaxed and ready to go. The only issue was then the night before I could tell myself that since I didn’t have to drive to the movie ranch I could have four or five extra drinks. Those morning drives were often accompanied by a brutal hangover.
Little House in the Hollywood Hills Page 14
